Memory of Birds is an interactive sound installation that unfolds among trees in the open space, and is developed in collaboration with a trauma therapist and the migratory pathways of birds. Situated at the intersection of ecology, memory, and political history, the work investigates forms of violence that become embedded within the land itself—violence that is both materially buried in the ground and obscured within collective memory. Through sound, listening, and guided somatic engagement, the installation invites participants to encounter landscapes as living archives that bear the traces of displacement, conflict, extraction, and survival.
Structured as a guided sensory experience, Memory of Birds asks participants to attune to the body as a vessel of memory and forgetting. Rather than preserving testimony as a permanent record, the work foregrounds the fragility and impermanence of remembrance. Conceived as a work that gradually consumes itself, it resists archival permanence and embraces disappearance. Memory of Birds reflects on the limits of memory, the burden of inheritance, and the uncertain ways histories of violence persist within both landscapes and bodies. The work narrates itself to be forgotten.
Commissioned by Bard Fisher Center LAB Common Ground.